I have been listening to music with a genuine passion since I was about five years old and I used to pretend I was a DJ dropping my gran’s old singles on a Dansette record player that was at their house.
There were probably singles that I bought before but the first one I can remember getting was “Centerfold” by J Geils band in 1982. So that all being said, I’ve listened to a lot of records in my time.
I can generally tell you pretty quickly whether I’m going to like something (call it a short attention span but I can sum things up sharpish) so I knew I was going to like “Jack Francis” the album a lot, from the opening “A Little Love”. Relaxed Americana with a touch of soul (check out the horns) and a half spoken delivery. “Felix And Sylvester” I’d written on my notes on my phone, along with words like “dosing blissfully”.
I was kind of right on both counts – but also wildly inaccurate.
Jack Francis is straight outta Southampton (its like Compton but with docks and a posh harbour behind the football ground….) and it turns out he’s toured and is friendly with F & S (I really should read the stuff I get sent with these albums before writing the reviews…..) but he relocated to Nashville to discover his passion. Crikey, it seems he’s done that. Because, if we move forward to “Helena” towards the end of the record, it’s about as far removed from the opener as can be. Now, disclaimer time: On those Samsung Notes it said “Promised Land? Springsteen? Should have been on “Darkness.”
Jack, though, he tells it better than me: “It was written after a dream I had where Bruce Springsteen was outside my house singing and playing guitar, sitting in the bed of a 1950’s Ford pick-up truck,” he says. “He was playing this song. I woke up at 6am and wrote the whole thing down in about 5 minutes. It was all in the dream – the lyrics, melody, chords, everything. I had to frantically search the internet after to make sure it wasn’t a song that already existed!”
It doesn’t. But my goodness, be glad it does. It’s mighty.
And so are the others. Francis (to be serious for the first time in almost 400 words) is a brilliant talent. There’s an incredible class about these nine songs, whether they are in the same vein as the opener (like the genuinely lovely and kind of funky “Silver Lining”) or the cracked, almost world -weary “Holiday”. Even if he sounds weather beaten here there’s no doubting there’s an underlying optimism about these tracks.
“Wild Eyes” is the work of a fine singer/songwriter. These have hooks that are more akin to rock songs than the folk club, and it’s interesting too, just how understated the music is, how unobtrusive it seems at first, before you realise how beguiling it is – “Driftwood” is perhaps the best example of that, but it holds true with many of them.
Born to Irish parents, a Celtic foray was perhaps always on the cards, and “Mean As Much As You” does that brilliantly, and if a lot of them have had organ flourish’s then perhaps the keyboards have never sounded better than they do on “The Wheel”.
“Cold Hearted Little Man”, the last one, as if to underline the fact that everything you think you know is always wrong, even adds a little bit of ska and a strident guitar line. Think Skinny Lister in one of their particularly drunken nights.
It ends a record that is quite superb, from a talent to really cherish. “Shall we fade that out?” he enquires at the end. Don’t. That’s the last thing “Jack Francis” the album, or Jack Francis the artist deserve.
Rating 9/10
